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#715194 24/10/20 01:48 PM
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Hey guys,

Ive gotten 2 items in EA that I find are overpowered that I feel that they need to be adressed. Toned abit or lose 1 of their abilities or somesuch.

Both are items for mages and while 1 is just really good nothing like it excists. The other is better then the best mage staff in dnd and it seriously feel it needs adressing.

Il start with the lesser of the 2. The Sapphire spark. A rare amulet. It gives you the ability to cast magic missle once per day. Which by itself isent that super good. But it has a 2nd effect. It buffs each missle with 1D4 additional Psychic force.

So why is this a problem? Well problem might be to big of a word, but its a very good item. It almost doubles the damage each missle does. This makes magic missle a very powerfull spell (which it already is without this buff mind you) making each missle (which auto hit) do 2D4+1 damage. It is a rare quality item so I guess theres that but there arent really items in dnd that buff a specific spell (to my knowledge anyway. Please correct me if im wrong) and while there are rules for DM's to make their own items it also cautions not to make items to powerfull. Im personally in the camp of 'its to powerfull' even though I love it as an item. After I found it I found myself not casting anything else. Magic missle is already pretty good and this item just makes it amazing. The single uses of magic missle is just meh on an item but I find the buff to damage is just to big.

My suggestion:Maybe reduce the damage bonus to +1 or +2 damage for each missle because a potential 4 additional damage per missle is very strong. Its also of a type of damage that not many creatures have resistance or immunity against. Rare or very rare quality seems appropiate.

Now the one that I do feel needs a major overhaul. The staff of arcane blessing.

Hoo boy. Where do I begin. So lets start with the fact that it has 3 effects. On an uncommon item. Most items that you find will only have 1 effect at that rarity. Heck armor+1 is already rare and that only adds a bonus of 1 to your AC. Items with this many abilities are generally legendary or an artifact of some kind. That nitpick out of the way, ets go over the effects though....

While it is a magical staff, it has no bonus to attack or damage. That is fine, I think its unlikely that it would be used like that anyway wink
It allows you to cast bless. Which is also fine. Lets call that ability 1.
Ontop of that though if the one holding the staff casts bless it gains a further 1D4 to attack and saving rolls. It doubles the effect that bless does. Lets call that ability 2.
And the cherry ontop....and the thing that makes this item completly and utterly broken. Ability 3. It gives you a bonus of 2D4 to hit with spells. Its unclear to me if thats only the ones hit by bless or it applies to the one holding the item? I assume the latter. Because otherwise spellcasters blessed in this manner would gain 2D4+2D4 bonus to hit (bless already gives a bonus to hit which effect is doubled and the 2nd effect on top of that would mean it becomes 4D4 which I think is unlikely)

So lets first bring up 2 other magical items that I would generally consider to be the pinnacle of magical staves for spellcasters. The Staff of power and the staff of the magi.
Staff of power. Very rare item. Counts as a +2 magical staff that also gives +2 to casting rolls, +2 to AC and it has 20 charges that you can use to cast spells or do more damage if you hit and expend a charge. You can also break the staff and extend charge to basicly turn it into a bomb but it also damages you.
Staff of the magi. Legendary staff. Counts as a +2 quarterstaff, gives +2 to spellcasting attack rolls. Has 50 charges to cast spell and you can absorb spells with the staff as a reaction if they are only cast at you. You also gain advantage on saving throws against spells.

So why bring up these 2 examples? They obviously have alot more abilities then the staff of arcane blessing right? Well the problem lies in that 2D4 bonus to hitting with spells. The biggest bonus on 1 single staff that you can find is +2. The wand of the war mage can go up to +3, and lets you ignore half cover but does nothing beyond that. Getting +4D4 to hitting with spells is so incredibly powerfull that even if you roll 1's on those die you are still getting a bonus double to that of these 2 examples above. A bonus of 4-16 to hitting something is laughably broken (should you buff the one holding the staff) and also seems abit out of character for the rest of the staff. The rest of the staff focuses on blessing your teammates for further effect which is I must admit a neat thing to add to a staff. But I feel the bonus to hit ontop of that is to much. The height of the bonus not beeing fixed but random is also abit weird as generally items give a fixed amount.

Even if the additional bonus to spellcasting applies to the caster, its minimum boost to hitting with spells is still equal to that of the above mentioned items and could be double as high. Add the spell caster to the people in the bless and you will just about only miss on 1's.

Suggestion: Lower the bonus to hitting with spells (for just the caster) to +1 or max +2 or remove it all together; but keep the rest of the stats. Maybe make it rare with 2 abilities (should the bonus to hit be removed) or a legendary artifact with all 3 (toned down to +1 or +2 ofcourse). Item would keep its niche but wouldnt make artifacts dwarved in power in comparison. And a staff that has a bonus to buffing your teammates is neat!

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The magic missile item is busted. Makes you not want to use any other magic ever again. Alternatively, they could limit the damage bonus to when you use the cast provided by the item, perhaps.

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While I mostly agree with you it surprises me you'd leave out warped headband of intellect which coupled with how anyone can use Wizard scrolls just doesn't feel right.

Also with that meta knowledge you could just go roll any class with total disregard for intellect -even Wizard potentially (true he's then bound to wear the headband for life and could never go over 18 but it's still a bit too good of a deal IMO)

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To summarize, late game items in the early game. I wonder how broken will be the Larian’s late game items.

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Originally Posted by Azarielle
While I mostly agree with you it surprises me you'd leave out warped headband of intellect which coupled with how anyone can use Wizard scrolls just doesn't feel right.

Also with that meta knowledge you could just go roll any class with total disregard for intellect -even Wizard potentially (true he's then bound to wear the headband for life and could never go over 18 but it's still a bit too good of a deal IMO)

Lol actually missed that item because I had them work as mercenaries for me. Early game good but not OP, at lvl 4 id have int 18 regardless with a mage.

Also you have to beat an ogre for it and only has 1 effect, setting your int to 18. If it would do things alongside that id agree that is abit much.

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Originally Posted by Azarielle
While I mostly agree with you it surprises me you'd leave out warped headband of intellect which coupled with how anyone can use Wizard scrolls just doesn't feel right.

Also with that meta knowledge you could just go roll any class with total disregard for intellect -even Wizard potentially (true he's then bound to wear the headband for life and could never go over 18 but it's still a bit too good of a deal IMO)

Yep. Knowing that item is so easy to obtane one could make absolutely broken eldritch knight. Why bother rising intelect if 18 is all your eldritch knight will ever need.

But if you don't know about it it isn't broken. Couse chances are you already made Lae'zel a battlemaster at this point.

Last edited by Dastan McKay; 24/10/20 03:14 PM.
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Originally Posted by Azarielle
While I mostly agree with you it surprises me you'd leave out warped headband of intellect which coupled with how anyone can use Wizard scrolls just doesn't feel right.

Also with that meta knowledge you could just go roll any class with total disregard for intellect -even Wizard potentially (true he's then bound to wear the headband for life and could never go over 18 but it's still a bit too good of a deal IMO)


I use the guide below called Sane magic item prices that was created by the community for 5e. Basically their are uncommon items that are Way stronger then rare or even very rare items. The rarity system in 5e is kind of a mess. I dont mind a stronger item here and their but its way to early in the game imo to have such a strong item so easily accessible. You could create a mage with 8 int if you really wanted to and still have 18 int basically right out of the gate.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8XAiXpOfz9cMWt1RTBicmpmUDg/view

For example, the Headband of Intellect (uncommon) is worth 8000gp. While a Potion of Invisibility (very rare) is only 180gp.
Using this guide you can clearly see the headband is way stronger then a basic uncommon item, even without having to math out the actual power of an item.

Side note, while the prices overall are decent in bg3, some of the potions are to cheap imo.

Last edited by 00zim00; 24/10/20 03:23 PM.
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Oh right the headband. I feel like it should just be 14 INT. Still crazy useful for some 8-10 INT character

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Originally Posted by 00zim00
Originally Posted by Azarielle
While I mostly agree with you it surprises me you'd leave out warped headband of intellect which coupled with how anyone can use Wizard scrolls just doesn't feel right.

Also with that meta knowledge you could just go roll any class with total disregard for intellect -even Wizard potentially (true he's then bound to wear the headband for life and could never go over 18 but it's still a bit too good of a deal IMO)


I use the guide below called Sane magic item prices that was created by the community for 5e. Basically their are uncommon items that are Way stronger then rare or even very rare items. The rarity system in 5e is kind of a mess. I dont mind a stronger item here and their but its way to early in the game imo to have such a strong item so easily accessible. You could create a mage with 8 int if you really wanted to and still have 18 int basically right out of the gate.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8XAiXpOfz9cMWt1RTBicmpmUDg/view

For example, the Headband of Intellect (uncommon) is worth 8000gp. While a Potion of Invisibility (very rare) is only 180gp.
Using this guide you can clearly see the headband is way stronger then a basic uncommon item, even without having to math out the actual power of an item.

Side note, while the prices overall are decent in bg3, some of the potions are to cheap imo.


What about the 3 potions of speed in the first 10 minutes of the game? Free haste for a level 1-4?
There was a certain point in the game thar I’ve accumulated nearly 30 potions of healing and tons of unused scrolls.
Seems that they’ve created the items and asked to their grandson to spread them over the map by unknown reasons.

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Potions beeing so common I actually dont mind. They are nice items to have and give you a nice boost in a fight. The amount is just abit silly. Same goes for the number of scrolls.

I mean, dont get me wrong here wizards need them to learn new spells and all but when you have 10 scrolls in your inventory they arent as much of a big thing as if youd had only 2 or 3.

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Originally Posted by Demoulius
Potions beeing so common I actually dont mind. They are nice items to have and give you a nice boost in a fight. The amount is just abit silly. Same goes for the number of scrolls.

I mean, dont get me wrong here wizards need them to learn new spells and all but when you have 10 scrolls in your inventory they arent as much of a big thing as if youd had only 2 or 3.


I agree, their is way to much and the worse part is they are not even needed in this amount. I have not once needed to use a potion or piece of food. Mostly since the rest system is so broken atm. Also probably helps i have a cleric in the group. But i can imagine how much of a cake walk it would be with all these extra potions laying about.

If they want to have a high magic world why not just make more common rarity potions that only give minor benefits. EG: similar to the item Orb of Shielding that reduces one specific damage type by 1d4 instead of full resistance. Or a potion of Quick Step that could basically give you Expeditious Retreat for a few rounds, assuming they fix the bonus action economy.

As for scrolls, while their is alot I wonder how it will feel once they are limited to their classes only.


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